


lives, lived

by nayt0reprince



Category: Harvest Moon, Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons Series (Video Games), Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Mild Angst, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:35:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27596950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nayt0reprince/pseuds/nayt0reprince
Summary: as always, a cucumber lands in kappa's lake.but this time, it's different.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	lives, lived

**Author's Note:**

> now, I know what you’re thinking: “why in the harvest goddess’s name would ANYONE write this??” to which I respond, “heck if I know.” and so, here we are, you bewildered from clicking on this accidentally, me on my fourth cup of coffee, and the universe a much stranger place. cheers and enjoy!

Spring comes as it does every year: in a slow, crackling unthaw of ice, in the poking heads of fresh sprouts, in the incessant chirping of newborn birds laying claim to the many surrounding trees. The fish rouse from a chilly season-long slumber, and frog eggs decorate the edges of the lake amidst the swathes of tall reeds. By all accounts, spring arrived as normally as it does, but the sinking sensation of something _wrong_ taints an otherwise usual swim through crystalline waters.

When a cucumber misses his head by three feet, he pokes his head out with a typical grimace and wads up to the water’s edge. 

It is then he realizes the source of the “wrongness” settling in his gut.

The old man takes a seat on the lakeside bank, legs crossing uncomfortably, cane settling by his side. It doesn’t take a goddess to understand the fragility of this man’s remaining life - so easily blown away by a simple breeze. The once-vibrant dark hues of his eyes dulled to a muted shadow of its former self. Glossy. 

“Good morning, Kappa.”

Kappa says nothing, as Kappa is one to do. He instead takes the cucumber bobbing freely in the water. By now, he oft elected to disappear from sight, as interactions with humans are dreadful and waste his time. Today, though. Today, he makes an exception, and fiddles with the cucumber’s skin.

“It’s going to be a nice day I think,” ambles on the old man. His shirt is unbuttoned in several places, shaking hands unable to finish the motion when getting ready earlier. Kappa doesn’t mention this. “A good day for animals and people alike. But I’ve done and sold the last of the coop to Lillia yesterday. Mugi took in the cows for me. Oh, how I’m going to miss them. I just can’t take care of them anymore like I used to. Shame, that.”

“Sprites,” Kappa deigns to say, “ask.” The little nuisances need something to do these days anyhow, aside from pestering him for favors. 

The old man chuckles. He uncrosses his legs and struggles to untie the bunny knots on his boots. Kappa’s webbed hands are of little assistance, so he just watches uncomfortably as they are peeled off, one by one. The old man sets his feet in the water, despite its chill. “Oh, I do suppose I could ask a favor or two of them, but sometimes you just have to know when it’s time to call it quits. Can still grow a mean crop, though. That’s the first,” he gestures to the cucumber, “of this spring, you know. Special, that, since it means I get to see you again - just in time.”

A silence stretches on between them. Kappa doesn’t like it. The old man never talks in length, always in a hurry to go from point A to point B in order to check on everyone and maintain a small but beloved farm. He did this for years now, blips of decades whizzing by like flies over rotting fruit. Today, though, he sits, head tilting toward the blue skies overhead, weathered hands plucking at the grasses around them. Kappa takes a bite of the cucumber. It tastes the same as always.

After a moment, it doesn’t. 

It tastes bitter.

“Goodbyes,” Kappa says.

“For someone antisocial, you catch on quick, don’tcha?” The old man laughs again, quieter this time. “It’s almost time for me.”

Two years prior, it was time for another human - a man who liked to fish, who had a wife, “wonderful” grandkids. He stopped coming by the lake one day, and then another, and another, until spring ended and summer came and ended and autumn came and with it the news trickling from the Sprites that “another has gone.” Kappa never spoke to that human before, and never cared for him much, what with the fool always throwing soda cans into his waters.

This one, though. This one is different.

“The Goddess promised me she would watch over my grandkid. Do you remember him? The little lad fell into your lake when he was but a wee tyke. He’s got the _gift,_ too, the same one I do.” The old man taps his temple. “I’m sure he’ll come around and stop by, too, once he learns of you. If,” he sighs, “he decides to take over the farm, of course. He’s got a real good job in the city now, I don’t think he’ll leave it so easily to come here.”

Kappa says nothing. The cucumber is half-eaten. Still bitter.

“He’s a bit shy, my grandson. I can only ask you to watch over him too for me, like you’ve done for so many years for this town.”

“No promises,” Kappa says, and he means it. Tries to, at any rate. Fails to. The old man nods in understanding, still smiling.

“His name’s Yuto,” he provides unhelpfully, and if Kappa bothers to memorize it, only time will tell. He does. Immediately. “Brown hair, brown eyes. Loves the stars and hums a cute diddy, if I do say so myself. Bunnies are his favorite animals, so I have no doubts he’ll be raisin’ a ruckus of ‘em in no time. The fluffier, the better.” The dullness in those eyes give way to a peculiar sparkle, one Kappa can never relate to. Humans have a wide breadth of emotion Kappa struggles to grasp. 

“Fluffy,” he repeats, for lack of something better to say. The morning birds call, _chirp chirp chirp,_ singing a song as old as he, familiar and the same as any other day. It’s been awhile since he last surfaced long enough to listen. The old man tilts his head and closes his eyes. He wiggles his submerged, weathered toes, then sighs.

“Well.” He pulls his feet from the water and stands, hobbles one step, two. He turns to look at Kappa. “Thank you for putting up with a fool of a farmer like me for too many years. ‘Til we meet again. Keep them waters clear, you hear? And if anyone gives you heck, make sure to tell me and I’ll give them a good ol’ lecture. I’m sure no one wants to listen to a rambly old man like me these days.”

He laughs again, hearty in spite of everything. Kappa says nothing. The cucumber is three-fourths eaten. He can’t bring himself to eat more of his prize for some reason. He watches the old man wave and meander down the dirt path, chatting with that police officer for a few scant seconds before disappearing down the hill. For a few more days, cucumbers splash into his lake, accompanied by the old man who’s name Kappa never bothered to learn in all these years.

“Charles,” the old man says when Kappa brings himself to ask. The cucumber sits heavy in his hands. “My friends call me Chuck, though. Never understood why that’s the abbreviation. Weird world we live in, eh?”

“Chuck,” he repeats, and the old man’s smile shines brighter than the lake waters Kappa purifies.

The cucumbers stop coming mid-spring, and he knows.

Kappa does _not_ know the name of the sting that comes with the knowledge of how frail humanity is. (He’s seen it once, in these mountains, so vivid and horrible - a woman dies alone in the rain, and her husband keeps coming back regardless. Kappa couldn’t do anything then. He can’t do anything, even now.) Their lives are but blinks in Kappa’s elongated lifespan, always popping in for a handful of moments before inevitably blipping out of existence. It is the truth of the world, one he is keenly aware of. Time passes by the lake, and while the lake remains the same, the world around it constantly shifts.

The old man no longer flits about in the background.

Kappa hears talks of “funerals” and weaved stories of a man adored by his community, despite his eccentricities. A man with a good laugh. A man of dedication and superb work ethic. A man who toiled for ages in the very dirts he soon would lay to rest in forevermore, until he is naught but bone and ash. The rain comes, chasing the whispers away, and Kappa remains still in the bottom of the lakebed. The last cucumber sits in front of him, uneaten, untouched. 

The Harvest Goddess peers into his lake.

“Kappa.”

He doesn’t bother to emerge from the lake’s bottom. She knows he can hear her.

“Kappa, the Sprites and I were wondering if you wanted to come with us to pay respects to our mutual friend,” she says. 

“No,” he answers. She is unsurprised, and doesn’t press further. The rains overhead batter the surface of the lake, a torrential downpour out of place for the season. He swims over to his hovel in the ground, a little home burrowed in the side of the lake’s mine, and stares at the collection of other uneaten cucumbers accumulating in the darker corners.

He goes by himself.

The Harvest Goddess and the Sprites left bouquets of miraculous flowers, ones that grew in lands tilled with an infusion of magic unfound in the little town. They compliment the grave nicely. Kappa squints at the carving of letters in rock. He cannot read human script. His finger pokes the carvings, traces the indecipherable letters of a name he cannot bring himself to say, and stares down at the mound of freshly turned soil.

He sets the cucumbers down beside the flowers. Stares for another moment, then nods. 

“‘Til… we meet… again,” he copies, his voice struggling to get the complicated human words out. Speech is not his strong point. He taps the top of the gravestone, nods one more time, and turns back to go home.

Then he stops, and turns on his heel in the other direction. No average human can spot him walking along the uncomfortable brick comprising the little town’s streets, each arduous step bestowing a grimace on his billed lips. He gets lost twice, if only because he’s next to never attempted to see what these humans constructed in this once forested land. He hates the houses. He hates the lights coming from the windows, bright and unsettling. He hates the muffled voices coming from the thick walls, lamenting the loss of a man they never truly understood.

Kappa finds the farm tucked away between the trees.

It’s nothing special; plots of land overrun with weeds, stones, and fallen branches, but the few crops the old man planted still persist despite their current environment. The cucumber vines sport dainty white flowers, petals dripping. Another house, small and unassuming, sits between an emptied barn and coop. From the smell, this is where the old man lives - lived. Lived, he internally corrects, and closes his eyes. He opens them next while magically appearing inside, water pooling around his feet, puddle growing on the creaking wooden floorboards of the tiny abode.

It’s cozy. It’s suffocating, smelling like cow manure and chickens. Kappa glances around the place and jerks one of his hands, the spell crackling between his fingers, and the air breathes pure once more. He frowns at all the boxes piled up by the front door, filled to the brim with the old man’s personal effects. Someone would come take the rest of him away, far far away, and leave the farm to ruin until somebody takes it and destroys it somehow. That’s how humans are, always destroying something good and great, always poisoning his waters, always - Kappa clicks his tongue, and stamps his foot.

“Why,” he asks aloud. _Why do you good humans never live longer?_

No one answers.

Kappa decides he’s had enough, and readies himself to return to his lake. The magic stills when his gaze lands on something familiar, something - something left unattended, unpacked in those ugly boxes. He approaches the small kitchen table, where a brown coat and hat sits on a chair’s backing. They belong - belonged - to the old man, who donned the clothing during the chillier months. The patches fray at the seams, in need of serious mending, and one of the inner buttons had fallen off.

The Harvest Goddess can fix it, he decides, not knowing if she actually can or not. Still, his finger traces the hat’s brim before pulling it on his head, then wraps the coat around himself. It’s warmer. Kappa has no need to feel warmer, because he is Kappa. He doesn’t care. They’re his now, and won’t get thrown into a fireplace somewhere carelessly. He looks around the house once more, nods, and feels the magic well up inside him.

“Goodbye,” he says as the rain begins to let up, “Chuck.”

No cucumbers splash in his lake for quite some time.

*

Spring comes as it does every year, and with it comes the boy.

The grandson is a weakling, reeking of the city and bears the constitution of a baby squirrel unable to keep up with its parents. The cucumber, too, is lackluster, its taste wonky and unfulfilling. Kappa almost doesn’t bother to appear, but he does anyways, if only to fulfill a promise to the past. 

“Hello,” says Yuto when Kappa surfaces to claim his first prize in many harvest moons. He smiles, and his dimples match those of the old man’s. How long has it been since then? “It’s nice to meet you,” he continues in his quiet, uncertain voice, bending down toward the lake’s surface and offering a hand. Kappa stares at it, perplexed. “I’m Yuto,” he finishes, as if Kappa doesn’t already have those syllables embedded in his brain. 

Kappa says nothing, as Kappa is always one to do; the same story that never changes with the seasons. 

But he shakes the hand in front of him before quickly disappearing from whence he came.

_‘Til we meet again._


End file.
